Dakar Rally

In 2020, the Dakar Rally made another controversial move, this time to the endless desert sands and razor-sharp rocky outcroppings of Saudi Arabia for the ultimate torture test of man and machine. And this year's images are absolutely stunning.

Italian electric motorcycle manufacturer Tacita is preparing to launch a new rally-focused bike in early January – and has just announced that it'll take the T-Race Rally out for a public debut at the world's greatest and most historic rally event.

The 2019 Dakar Rally is now over, and as well as a new crop of extraordinary stories about extraordinary human beings, we can now sit back and enjoy some thoroughly spectacular imagery from one of the most grueling and beautiful motorsport events on Earth.

The world's most grueling rally event is underway again, as more than 330 cars, trucks, bikes and quads set off for at least 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of high speed machine torture in the 41st Dakar Rally. This year's course takes competitors on a lap of southern Peru, starting and finishing in Lima.

Once the Dakar force to beat, Mini has had to sit by and watch Peugeot's beastly 2WD overshadow it the past two years. Now it's experimenting with a rugged 2WD buggy of its own, preparing to run both 2WD and 4WD cars at next year's Dakar. Are Peugeot's days at the top numbered?

The Silk Way Rally is entering its final stages, having rolled through Russia and Kazakhstan. Sebastien Loeb is still leading the way in his Peugeot 3008DKR Maxi, but the pack hasn't given up the fight yet. Here are some of the best pictures from the middle legs of the 2017 Silk Way Rally.

Peugeot's first three attempts at returning to the Dakar Rally were 13th in 2015, a win in 2016 and a 1-2-3 finish in 2017. How do you follow that up? The team has designed and built a radical much-wider car for next year's race, and will test it thoroughly in the Silk Way Rally in China next week.

The Paris-Dakar Rally is one of the toughest tests in international motorsport, pitting cars against blazing heat and shifting sand dunes over the course of two weeks. Acciona has become the first team to survive it in an all-electric car, completing the 2017 event in the Acciona 100% EcoPowered.

The Paris-Dakar Rally is one of the toughest tests in motorsport, pitting cars against blazing heat and sand dunes. Reaching the finish is impressive and cars that have completed the race are treated with a certain reverence. At Nissan, that has led to a full rebuild of the Patrol Fanta Limon.

From 1983 to 1985, BMW won back-to-back Dakar rallies with its R80G/S adventure bike. The BMW Motorrad Concept Lac Rose pays tribute to those winning machines while capitalizing on the popularity of the R nine T among customizers today.